arrival
It was a pretty long trip for Paul, Jörg and I to drive up to the cabin. We stopped at grandad's house in Racine. Jörg wore his Desert Storm baseball cap with the American flag on it to make a good impression. Then we drove the three hundred miles (almost exactly) from grandad's house to the cabin. We were driving my 1982 Honda Civic sedan. It was a five speed and got really great mileage, around 40 miles per gallon with premium gas on the highway if it was driven at around 55 mile per hour. Jörg didn't like to drive slow though, in fact, he seemed incapable of it. I would remind him to slow down, and he would. But minutes later I'd start to feel the rumbling and vibration of higher speed and look at the speedometer and we'd be doing seventy. I'd remind him again, he'd slow down for a few minutes, and the cycle would continue.
I liked having the four door sedan. It was nice not having to open the door and lean forward to lift the seat to let someone into the back seat. It didn't really have that much more room than the two door, but as car owner, I usually exempted myself from sitting in the back seat anyway.
The radio didn't have a tape player, so I put in an old tape player that I'd salvaged from a previous car. I wired it so the tape player would play whether the car was on or not, so I always had to remember to turn it off, or it could drain the battery. It had an auto reverse, so if you left a tape in it, it would keep playing indefinitely. Sometimes I wouldn't be paying attention and I'd suddenly realized a tape was on it's third time playing through.
We each brought along a few tapes to listen to. One of our favorites was a tape with the new REM album Out of Time on one side, and one side of an older REM album on the other side. It was a 90 minute tape, and the Out of Time album barely fit on one side but there was a big blank space on the other side because it was only one side of the other album.
As it happened, that was the last tape we listened to as we approached the cabin. Coincidentally, the whole Out of Time album played, then the tape flipped, and played the one side of the old album, which ended just as we arrived at the cable across the dirt track which acted as the gate to the shack, so it was like it had been the soundtrack for the trip. The key we had didn't work in the padlock for some reason, so I thought we'd have to walk from there to the shack. There was a lot of play in the cable though, and when Jörg and Paul held it up in the air, there was room enough for me to drive the car under it.
It had always seemed like a welcoming sound to me to hear the long weeds and grass scraping against the underside of the car as we drove down the dirt track. It was so nice to round the final bend and see the cabin there, still standing. I always had a fear in the back of my mind that one day I would arrive at the cabin to see it collapsed upon itself. But not this time. I turned the car off, and there was the sudden quiet of the north woods. After five hours of road noise, talking, music playing and wind from open windows, the silence was refreshing. It can even make you feel like you're the only people in the world.
The key to the padlock on the cabin door was in its usual place and we opened up the door to let the place air out as we started unpacking the car. The trunk and all the car doors were open and we were carrying things into the cabin. At one point, Jörg was getting something out of the trunk, I was getting something out of the front passenger side, and Paul was getting something out of the driver's side back seat.
Suddenly, a loud voice said, "Hey, I can't find nothing on the radio."
And then someone else said, "Yo! turn to that station."
All three of us froze, quite startled that there was someone else at the cabin, even though it had been so quiet up until then. Thoughts like, who the hell is here, how did they sneak up on us, have they been watching us this whole time were just starting to form in my mind as the music to the song "Radio Song" started playing.
The blank part of the tape had been playing for the last twenty minutes or so and the auto reverse had just flipped the tape to the Out of Time side, and that's one of the few songs in the world that begins with two people saying something in pretty normal voices without music.
I exclaimed, "Damn, that scared the shit out of me!" and similar declarations followed from Paul and Jörg, followed further by much laughter.
I liked having the four door sedan. It was nice not having to open the door and lean forward to lift the seat to let someone into the back seat. It didn't really have that much more room than the two door, but as car owner, I usually exempted myself from sitting in the back seat anyway.
The radio didn't have a tape player, so I put in an old tape player that I'd salvaged from a previous car. I wired it so the tape player would play whether the car was on or not, so I always had to remember to turn it off, or it could drain the battery. It had an auto reverse, so if you left a tape in it, it would keep playing indefinitely. Sometimes I wouldn't be paying attention and I'd suddenly realized a tape was on it's third time playing through.
We each brought along a few tapes to listen to. One of our favorites was a tape with the new REM album Out of Time on one side, and one side of an older REM album on the other side. It was a 90 minute tape, and the Out of Time album barely fit on one side but there was a big blank space on the other side because it was only one side of the other album.
As it happened, that was the last tape we listened to as we approached the cabin. Coincidentally, the whole Out of Time album played, then the tape flipped, and played the one side of the old album, which ended just as we arrived at the cable across the dirt track which acted as the gate to the shack, so it was like it had been the soundtrack for the trip. The key we had didn't work in the padlock for some reason, so I thought we'd have to walk from there to the shack. There was a lot of play in the cable though, and when Jörg and Paul held it up in the air, there was room enough for me to drive the car under it.
It had always seemed like a welcoming sound to me to hear the long weeds and grass scraping against the underside of the car as we drove down the dirt track. It was so nice to round the final bend and see the cabin there, still standing. I always had a fear in the back of my mind that one day I would arrive at the cabin to see it collapsed upon itself. But not this time. I turned the car off, and there was the sudden quiet of the north woods. After five hours of road noise, talking, music playing and wind from open windows, the silence was refreshing. It can even make you feel like you're the only people in the world.
The key to the padlock on the cabin door was in its usual place and we opened up the door to let the place air out as we started unpacking the car. The trunk and all the car doors were open and we were carrying things into the cabin. At one point, Jörg was getting something out of the trunk, I was getting something out of the front passenger side, and Paul was getting something out of the driver's side back seat.
Suddenly, a loud voice said, "Hey, I can't find nothing on the radio."
And then someone else said, "Yo! turn to that station."
All three of us froze, quite startled that there was someone else at the cabin, even though it had been so quiet up until then. Thoughts like, who the hell is here, how did they sneak up on us, have they been watching us this whole time were just starting to form in my mind as the music to the song "Radio Song" started playing.
The blank part of the tape had been playing for the last twenty minutes or so and the auto reverse had just flipped the tape to the Out of Time side, and that's one of the few songs in the world that begins with two people saying something in pretty normal voices without music.
I exclaimed, "Damn, that scared the shit out of me!" and similar declarations followed from Paul and Jörg, followed further by much laughter.
posted by danteand at 9/16/2005 03:42:00 AM
2 Comments:
I don't know if it is still standing or not. The property was inside a national forest, and it was recently sold to the federal government and has become part of the national forest. I don't know if they demolished it or left it standing. Or if it collapsed of its own accord.
The shack (cabin) was still standing in 2002 when Gretchen and I camped out there (in a tent to avoid the mosquitos in the cabin.)
Ken was there one day and took a picture near the shack which showed three bears in a tree (which we hadn't noticed while we were there), apparently a mother and 2 cubs.
But the cabin may have been removed by the government after the sale.
Valerie
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